This will be my sixth half-marathon. Every year it sneaks up on me, and every year I find myself grateful for the ritual of it. There’s a sense of floating along on time and words, each post like the chime of a clock, knowing that we’re all doing it together. Wishing you all a wonderful marathon!
Jo Eckler
Jo
Living and procrastinating writing in Austin, TX, by teaching yoga and serving as a psychologist, among other things.
Hour Twelve: After
Hour Twelve: After
Doors close, eyes shut, sun sinks, tide goes out
Eyesight dims, bones weaken, hand shakes
Night lengthens, leaves fall, snow drifts
Stone crumbles, earth fractures
Calendar page flips
Days piling up
All of them
Without
You.
Hour Eleven: The Call
Hour Eleven: The Call
Skyscraper bursting periwinkle cloud
Storefront spilling needle-sharp beat
My heart spread on sizzling pavement
Gumboot-sticky
Stomach sourdough-rancid
As life pivots towards pain
Hour Ten: Lost
Hour Ten: Lost
Grief has its own gravity
Dripping down darkly
Achingly blue
Hour Nine: Idiomsmashup
Hour Nine: Idiomsmashup
A stitch in
Time heals all
Work and no play
It’s raining cats and
Dog days of
Wine and roses
Penny saved is a
Penny for your
Thoughts and prayers
Hour Eight: Final Separation
Hour Eight: Final Separation
How death sorts us
Like to like
Eyes gone dark go to ground
Their light floats up to sun
Security of feet in mud
The possibility of sky
Hour Seven: Normality
Hour Seven: Normality
We get used to the
most unimaginable
of circumstances
Memories fade until
the new is all that is known
ever adjusting
Hour Six: Losing Ground
Hour Six: Losing Ground
Just a slight stumble at first
Slipping slightly
Shifting to splaying for stability
Swaying shakily
Surrendering into stillness
Hour Five: breathing room
Hour Five: breathing room
No one questions you when you say
I have to go to the bathroom
open door to
slick tiles
pause in time
faucets pour cool renewal
warm comfort
let faces fall
tears drip
rage tremble
room to breathe, room to seethe
room to grieve
to reassemble
then rejoin
Hour Four: Why Cats
Hour Four: Why Cats
The rumble of purrs
Soft nudges of a nose on an arm
Weaving infinity symbols between feet
Questions shining in iridescent eyes
Endless lessons in melting muscles
And stretching sinews
Soft breath in our ears as
They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny.
(Last line from bell hooks, all about love.)